NASA mulls delay of Hubble mission

NASA is studying whether to delay for a few days a shuttle flight to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope in order to make up for the training days lost due to Hurricane Ike, according to astronauts assigned to the flight.

Shuttle program managers will huddle Wednesday and Tuesday to discuss preparations for the 11-day mission that will finclude a record-tying five spacewalks. Top NASA managers will meet Sept. 24-25 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a final review of the flight plan and will decide on the launch date.

The current launch target is Oct. 9 at 11:33 p.m., CDT, though the launch period extends until Oct. 10 at 12:39 a.m., CDT.

During a session at Kennedy on Tuesday, Atlantis commander Scott Altman said he’d like to recover some if not all the training time missed last week in Houston while the Johnson Space Center was closed in the aftermath of Ike.

“We did miss seven days of training. It’s hard to slice all of that out and still stay on track,” Altman told reporters during a brief news conference at the base of the shuttle’s launch pad. “So, you come to the question of either slipping the launch or cutting out (training) events, and we are still working the whole system to balance that.”‘

Altman, who leads a crew of seven astronauts, said the missed training sessions included spacewalk, shuttle launch and Hubble rendezvous rehearsals that are as important to the Mission Control team as to the astronauts.

Johnson and Mission Control re-opened on Monday, after 11 days off while officials prepared for and then responded to the storm.

The astronauts said they were dealing with the same storm damage to their homes as their colleagues and neighbors.

“We are all fine,” said Altman. “The good news is we are all standing here.”

The 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope has not been refurbished in more than six years.

The Atlantis astronauts are prepared to replace batteries and gyroscopes that power and aim the observatory as well as install two new science instruments and fix a pair of imaging devices that have broken down since the last repair flight.

“We are really excited about going up to Hubble and returning the telescope to absolutely top capability,” said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who leads the four man spacewalk team.

The Atlantis astronaut are at Kennedy for launch pad escape drills. They end the three-day session on Wednesday with a countdown rehearsal in which they will board Atlantis.